Two Illinois government employees have filed an appeal with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit to continue their case challenging the constitutionality of government union officials forced-dues privileges. The workers, all employed by the State of Illinois are currently required to pay union dues or fees to a union as a condition of their employment.

A District Judge recently dismissed the case, Janus v. AFSCME, and the two employees, who are receiving free legal assistance from staff attorneys with the National Right to Work Foundation and the Illinois Policy Institute’s Liberty Justice Center, have now formally filed their appeal of that dismissal.

National Right to Work Foundation President Mark Mix issued the following statement regarding the latest development in the case:

“No citizen should be forced to pay union dues or fees just to work for their own government. This is a fundamental violation of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and the violation is especially egregious for public servants who are currently required to pay dues to a private organization just to work for their own government. We are hopeful that the United States Supreme Court will soon outlaw this unjust practice for every public employee across the country.”

You gotta wonder if the Illinois Policy Institute would support a bill allowing all customers to eat at restaurants without paying a dime.

…Adding… OK, so, I misread an e-mail with the above press release attached. The case was appealed a few months ago and oral arguments are tomorrow. Sorry for any confusion.

The truth is that RTW is actually beginning to have the opposite effect in a few RTW states. Union membership is riding in Colorado and Michigan. I think just like Rauner United labor you are going to see a lot more of this. It’s an article of faith I hold close.

I welcome RTW as a cleansing change. I want to stand with only those who want to stand with me. If I’m doing my job right, and meeting member needs hopes and resources then they will naturally want to stay Union. The rebuild and power is from the ground up. Union Marines are what we need to be about. I also like Union Gurkhas.

Publicly regulated utilities spend money on lobbying, yet I’m not able to opt for “fair share” with AMEREN or Commonwealth Edison. Private property ownership is a rather basic right, yet nearly all new developments require dues paid to homeowners associations (HOAs). Many HOAs send a portion of their dues to CAI, a lobbying organization, and there’s no “fair share” opt out for the portion of dues used for lobbying. On those issues, right wing “advocacy” groups are nowhere to be found, but when it comes to unions, “fair share” doesn’t go far enough. Anyone who advocates that unions shouldn’t even be allowed to recover their costs doesn’t want unions to survive. Yet we wonder why the share of wealth is far more concentrated in this country than it is anywhere else in the industrialized world.

“You’re not comparing apples to apples. Citizens have a Constitutional right to work for their government. They don’t have a Constitutional right to eat in a restaurant.”

What constitution are you smokin’ The better question is does a worker have a right to mooch the various services. benefits and protections that are in place because of labor agreement for a job they voluntarily sought and accepted.
If that is unacceptable shuffle on down to Sam’s.
Wonder if IPI will allow us to hang out in that nice office BigBrain bought for them?

Well employers don’t force employees to pay dues either. Unions do that. There’s a third party here creating conditions on employment when employment should be a contract only between an employer and an employee. They come to mutually agreeable terms, the employee works for them.

A more apt restaurant analogy than your original would be if paying the shoe-shiner in the corner was a condition of eating at Bob’s Steak House.

Wrong, I just think collective bargaining should be voluntary. If 80 out of 100 employees want to negotiate standard terms, let them. If they other 20 don’t want to be bound by those 80, they should have the option not to be.

Rich makes a good point. It’s not like the State keeps fair share dues a secret to potential employees. You know what you signed up for when you accepted the State position so stop expecting special treatment. Either don’t accept an AFSCME-covered position or work towards a promotion into a merit comp. position if you don’t like fair share.

I don’t have an issue with the fair share concept, but AFSCME’s fair share is about 98% of full share dues. Hence many choose to pay the full share under the belief they will get better representation if they have an employment issue. AFSSME members didn’t get much bang for their buck in the last election or the most recent contract negotiations.

These workers who filed the lawsuit obviously don’t like Unions and like the Governor, wishes they would go away. That’s their right. It would be a messy situation for their employer though, the state, if these folks wanted the right to opt out of the Union in every sense, which would result in them negotiating individually with their employer for their benefits such as salary, insurance, etc. There’s the rub, these folks want the same benefits as their coworkers but they don’t want to pay a dime to the organization that negotiates on their behalf. To me that fits the description of a deadbeat.

Political Animal, it sounds like your issue is with the Taft-Hartley act, passed by conservatives over a Presidential veto that required unions who were elected by a majority of their workers to be the exclusive representative to represent all of the workers, even those who choose not to be members of the union.

I think if federal law didn’t require unions to represent workers who weren’t members, we could have an honest discussion about this. But forcing unions to do the work without being able to seek compensation from the people receiving their services is a politically motivated illegal taking, plain and simple.

While nobody is forced to work for state government, they do have a Constitutional right to. Requiring someone to pay a fee to a union in order to exercise this Constitutional right is wrong and the purpose of this lawsuit.

==If they other 20 don’t want to be bound by those 80, they should have the option not to be.= Reality check. I hope those 20 have their checks already made out to their local politicians, or they will be free-riders, free of employment. Those are the 2 options of employment at the State of IL. Get rid of the COLLECTIVE bargaining, and all you have left is 1 option, donate. NOT the solution. It’s funny how many republican Public Service Adminstrators ran to the union when Blago got elected isn’t it? It’s like the LRB was Best Buy and it was black Friday…all of the scratching and clawing.

Juice at 11:23 nailed it. Until federal labor laws are changed so labor unions are no longer forced to represent people not paying dues these RTW people are no different than anybody else sponging off others.

Juice, federal does not require that unions represent anyone other than their own members. They choose to do so of their own voilition. If they want to represent their members and their members only, all they have to do is relinquish their exclusive bargaining representative status.

“While nobody is forced to work for state government, they do have a Constitutional right to.”

Really?!?! So when I was laid off for a year and applied to the State for entry level jobs for which I was over qualified for and didn’t get, I should have sued because my constitutional right to work for the State was violated? That is a new one on me.

You’re not forced to be a member of the NRA. You’re not forced to be a member of the Chamber of Commerce. And, you’re not forced to take a job that requires union membership. I have no idea what is so difficult to understand about the concept.

There is nothing contested in the hearing tomorrow. BOTH sides — yes the 2 employees- ask the court of appeals to affirm the dismissal of the suit. It is just a procedural step to get to the Supreme Court. So the real argument will come when they seek permission to appeal there. The Supreme Court is the only ballgame that counts now.

If you are in a UNION-COVERED position, then you should pay union dues or fair share. If you don’t want to pay union dues, then get a NON-UNION-COVERED position. There are quite a few in the state, since many NON-UNION-COVERED positions (merit-comp) have been vacated recently by people either retiring or finding jobs that don’t freeze their wages for ten years! If you don’t like paying union dues or fair share, and therefore, don’t like the benefits that the union gets for you, take a job that that is not covered by a union and the benefits that come with that (currently: no pay raises, and just a few years ago, mandatory furlough, no pay for overtime, along with the ever-delightful anxiety of knowing you could be fired at any time for any reason). I was merit comp for nine years, and it’s no fun! We need to protect unions in this country, since they are under attack nationwide.

==The beginning of the end for public unions. By the time this reaches the USSC, the Court will be solidly conservative. Your last hope died with November’s election.==

Not if they do the right thing, and say that, “If you choose not to join the union, you don’t get the protection of the union contract.” See how many of those freedom-lovers will choose not to join the union when the contract says that no one outside the union can be paid as much as, or promoted ahead of, any union member in the same job, and non-union employees have to be laid off first.

The biggest difficulty for public sector unions is there is no counter balance in negotiating a contract. In the commercial sector, if a union pushes too hard, it can bankrupt a company. In the public sector, there’s not the same counterbalance. In fact, with public sector unions they try to vote out the politician that doesn’t give them what they want. As a result, for the politicos, negotiating with the unions is a “lose-lose” proposition.

The better (though longer) analogy is a vendor like Pepsi having a contract with a college to sell Pepsi on the campus. Then (thanks to the right to free ride) offer the students, faculty and staff the choice between paying a lower or a higher price for a can of Pepsi from the same machine. Eventually, Pepsi will go broke as more customers choose the lower free-riding price, which of course is the goal. Unionized public sector jobs are the last bastion of middle class stability for the bottom 90% of the education attainment scale.

==Employers would entice employees to quit the union by negotiating tough with the union and more generous with individuals. The union would be paid according to the lowest common denominator.==

If the employers could do that, they would already be paying the union according to the lowest common denominator. The unions exist and get the employees to sign up because they get the employees a better deal than they would get bargaining on their own.

“This is a fundamental violation of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution”

It has nothing to do with the First Amendment. Fair share fees pay for nuts-and-bolts services unions provide, such as bargaining, contracts and all their benefits, grievances, etc. This is no different for the private sector than for the public sector. Having a double standard is discrimination. It’s treating public workers as being “less than” private workers.

There are multiple opportunities for government workers to express their First Amendment rights when it comes to public unionization:

1) Be like Boeing workers in South Carolina and don’t vote for a union to begin with
2) Vote to de-certify the union
3) Change the political culture of the union

Also, as Scalia implied, government workers have free speech limitations at work. Managers can refuse to grant workers’ demands in the workplace and stop the workers from continuing to make demands or requests. Workers don’t have unlimited free speech at work.

This balances out with workers who choose to pay union dues. They have First Amendment rights also.

The law should be changed so that unions aren’t FORCED to represent employees who don’t want to be represented. Let them fend for their own wages. Retirement vacation holidays job security etc etc. if they don’t want to pay. Fine. Don’t pay but they shouldn’t get the benefits